Scientific American Blogger SNAFU
Dear friends of women in science,
Often, disempowered groups object to what the society at large would like to dub them. I remember "black power" being as much about claiming the name "black" as about "power." More recently, there have been attempts to reclaim the word "queer" instead of "gay." Naming is often a rite of power. In Native American societies, not everyone knows the name of a person as they were named early on. Instead, they have a name given as a result of what life dealt out to them, a name of common use.
Recently, Dr. Danielle N. Lee, a black woman blogging as The Urban Scientist for Scientific American, faced a different sort of naming: name calling. She declined an invitation to write for a different blog network called Biology Online that does not pay its bloggers, saying "Thank you very much for your reply, but I will have to decline your offer." I don't find anything in that reply provocative at all. But the editor at this network, apparently incensed, then answered, "Because we don't pay for blog entries? Are you an urban scientist or an urban whore?"
Dr. Lee was understandably deeply offended. Name calling because someone won't do a job for free seems out of line to most people. She responded, "Did you just call me a whore?" and then decided to post about this exchange on her Urban Scientist blog (at the Scientific American blog network). Her post included a video response to the Biology Online editor, as well as posted copies of the above email exchange. Shortly after that, Scientific American removed Dr. Lee's post. Amanda Hess, freelance science writer and DoubleX blogger, recently noted that the Editor-in-Chief of Scientific American, Mariette DiChristina (@mdichristina), tweeted in response to criticism about removing the exchange that Scientific American is a publication for discovering science. The post was not "appropriate" because SciAM is about "discovering science" and was "therefore removed." Then they said they needed to independently verify this story with Biology Online. They did not contact Dr. Lee directly about their removing of the post at her Urban Scientist blog..
The post that Scientific American removed from Dr. Lee's Urban Scientist blog specficially addressed the racist and sexist issues that persist our culture, the ways to address them, and how some have survived anyway. Not noticeably different in kind from this very exchange, so many were puzzled and remain so.
As of today (Monday, October14) officials at Biology Online officially apologized with a post on their own network, saying that the editor in question who name-called Dr. Lee was fired, effective immediately. Also, Scientific American reconsidered the post takedown (there was an upswell of support for Dr. Lee on twitter via #standingwithDNLee), and Dr. Lee's post containing a summary of the incident and video response is now back up, with an editorial note, presumably since Biology Online has verified that it did happen.
What do you think about this exchange? Should Scientific American, having encouraged dialog on these topics by having Dr.Lee as a blogger, then suppress entries that they object to? On what ground, if so? There are many layers here that are about name-calling, disrespect of women, and silencing of a woman's perspective on discouraging power structures. Let's discuss.
best,
Laura
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The best and most widely quoted response from Dr Lee about the "whore" name calling:
"It wasn’t just that he called me a whore – he juxtaposed it against my professional being: 'Are you urban scientist or an urban whore?' Completely dismissing me as a scientist, a science communicator (whom he sought for my particular expertise), and someone who could offer something meaningful to his brand. What? Now, I’m so immoral and wrong to inquire about compensation?"
It's sad that, here in a professional exchange, a woman who disappoints someone is so easily called a whore, as a way to invalidate her professional position.
Kate Clancy says it very well in her blog post:
"But situations like both the first act of calling Danielle an “urban whore,” then the second act of stripping her of her voice, demonstrate that the implicit boundaries do not match the explicit ones. That underneath it all, we’ve still all been culturally conditioned to see STEM as a place for white men, and so we make invisible what makes us uncomfortable. We silence the people that don’t quite look like they should be inside the boundary."
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/context-and-variation/2013/10/14/standingwithdnlee-sciam/
Like the last question in your poll, Laura, this mess illustrates exactly why this blog is desperately needed! I can't believe they removed it. At least it's back up now.
Livi
